


Moon and Tide

by Fulgadrum



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Not Romance, Post-canon Hunter (Childhood's Beginning Ending), Stabbing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:58:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fulgadrum/pseuds/Fulgadrum
Summary: Ignotum per ignotius: corvus oculum corvi non eruit.Or, “birds of a feather,” as the old saying went.





	1. Chapter 1

The Void is all things. Small-minded men have remarked upon its nature, time and again, tossing out platitudes in hopes of grasping its mysteries. 

_Vast,_ they said, _and cold. A place far removed from our own world. If one could mount an expedition into such a place, who knows what might be found?_ Against their own ignorance they speculate. 

_It is where old things go, but nothing belongs._

_A place where the future is glimpsed through shadows and mist._

_Where the myriad possibilities take form, for a moment, before once again scattering. A broken reflection of the mundane realm. Maddening, unknowable. Existing outside of time, and understanding._

The simple musings of a limited imagination. Hollow words, too far removed from the truth to be worth anything but the accolades of other sad fools. Oh, to be a natural philosopher guessing at the Void! The futile attempt to measure the unending, to plunge floorless oceans, to map a landscape of which the only constant is change! They comprehend vastness but not _infinity_. What use are numbers, here, in this place that exists outside them? 

Ah, but _quis enim audit? Nihil locutus est._

It would surely break them to know the truth. That the world where they walked, lived, and died, where they ate their meals and said their prayers, where they lay their heads down for rest—that was the true reflection. And indeed, what a poor mirror it made, capturing only _one instance_ of the incalculable potentiality of the worlds that coexist within the timeless Void. 

The Void is all things, and the ‘world,’ as it is known, is simply one infinitesimal aspect of it. 

The one who walks here knows this as few others could. From time to time, he would share what he knew, what he was, with a select few. His Marked. Most often, this simply served to confirm his bias—people with power over others so consistently abuse it. His own distant human existence, now interrupted, had intimately acquainted him with such cruelty. A dull eventuality, to be sure. If he was lucky, at the very least, his chosen would abuse his gifts creatively. That unsavory business was just enough to hold his attention, but what interest did yet another massacre inspire for him in the infinitude of history’s slaughters? A dead man was a dead man, whether dispatched by knife, plague, fire, or treachery. 

For most of his long existence he has orchestrated these little experiments with the human heart, and come away disappointed. 

Sometimes, though. Sometimes, people managed to surprise him. He lived for these little joys. When one is fused with the literal incarnation of all that was and will be, there simply aren’t many surprises left. The most he could hope for was that, of the endless choices his chosen bearers may make, they take the path least likely. 

It was entertainment, of a sort. 

Never directly intervening in the course of human history, but simply planting the agents of change—people in the most expedient positions to use his gift to tear at the status quo. His Marked tore down dynasties. They built empires. Became kings and queens. Became prophets, witches, generals, beggars. Became gods. Became monsters. 

For this, he had earned worship and enmity in equal measure. He was largely indifferent to such sentiment. Here in the churning center of existence, detached from humanity yet still burdened with the human capacity to _feel,_ the Outsider languished in ennui. 

And so it came as a great shock when an immense, alien moon rose unbidden over the Void, grand and inexplicable. 

Not so great a shock, however, as being run through with a giant cleaver an instant later.


	2. Chapter 2

No one ever talked about the city on the mountain by the sea. Most seemed content to forget that there even was such a place as Yharnam. Though the mountain city was the valley town’s closest neighboring settlement, no one ever came down from it. Seemingly self-sufficient, they produced no goods intended for foreign commerce, and indeed, had rebuked all trade offers—an embargo which, though unofficial, had held for hundreds of years. Perhaps even from before the valley town had been founded. 

If it wasn’t for the travelers who passed through on occasion in search of that strange city, it would be easy enough to pretend Yharnam didn’t exist. 

For the young Hunter, who had a brave spirit and restless curiosity, this forbidden topic sparked an almost obsessive interest. And so, they began an inquiry. 

Mother and father were of course no help at all. The old woman who tended her chickens by the wall of stone and briars said it was cursed, an opinion echoed by the twin boys who lived in the district past the courthouse. The well-traveled man, who settled down in the valley town several years ago to open an aviary, was of the idea that Yharnam was a place of such wealth and greed that the people there stayed cooped up because they simply reviled the idea of sharing their good fortune. 

“They have treasure, then?” the Hunter said, offering their last peppermint to the man. He took the sweet and idly twisted at the yellow wax paper, his gaze on the distant black peak where mist-shrouded Yharnam lay. 

“Oh, aye,” said the man, his voice far away. “Gold and silver, out of their mines. S’where all that smoke billows up from. Must be.” 

“But how do you know?” 

The man was quiet for a long moment, crunching on his peppermint, thinking perhaps of how to answer—or, the Hunter thought, judging by his hesitance, what information he might safety share. 

“Can’t nothing grow in that climate but thistles and grass. Soil’s no good.” 

“So?” 

“So, the food they eat has to come from somewhere, you follow? Mighty difficult, feeding a whole city on rocks and wishes—so they ship food in, and that takes pockets deeper than I care to ponder, considerin’ they’ve been doin’ that for a hundred years or more.” 

To the Hunter, this all seemed very poor evidence for treasure. 

“But who do they buy from? Not us here, and we’re the closest.” 

“That’s the thing, ain’t it? Has to be there’s a seaport on the other side of the mountain.” 

“Never heard of a port like that.” 

“No one has. Whoever has their hands in that operation ain’t liable to spread the word around, I don’t imagine, not while they’re fillin’ their coffers with Yharnam gold. Who’d take their money, knowing where it came from? Not a soul ’round these parts. And that’s all there is to it—even those rich folk have to eat. It’s just sensible.” 

To the Hunter, it wasn't certain as all that, but for the next week they dreamed of riches, decadent palaces, vaulted ceilings, feasts, 

~~twin thrones, polished armor, faceless masks, red gowns, the Martyr’s corpse sat frozen on the roof, long fingers twitching to life~~

and was almost disappointed to wake to the white plaster ceiling of their attic room. 

It didn’t take long for the Hunter’s parents to discover their child’s unnatural fixation. They at first discouraged it gently, attempting to inspire their charge to take interest in accounting or medicine—their respective trades. It wasn’t until the Hunter’s mother found them knee deep in the mountain-fed river—picking bits of stonework, shards of glass bottles, and gastropod shell fragments out of the riverbed silt—that the situation truly boiled over. 

That night, the young Hunter nursed the bruises they’d received from the caning their father had given them, watched the warm pinprick of light on the mountainside from the window, and wondered. 

The moon was bright.


	3. Chapter 3

The Outsider wasn’t indestructible. His long deposed predecessors, still worshipped in some dark, remote corners of the earth, were a testament to that. It was also not altogether unlikely that he would be succeeded by others, in time. 

Still, he hadn’t expected an interloper to appear and attempt to slay him with an oversized cleaver, of all things—and there was the crux of the issue, wasn’t it? _He hadn’t expected it._ Of all the attempts made on his life (few though they were, the Outsider was very, very old, and had earned no shortage of animosity since he merged with the Void), not one had escaped his precognition. 

Until now. 

Bemused, he spent a moment idly examining the blade jutting though his middle—wickedly sharp, with a toothy, serrated edge—before deconstructing his body and reforming a ways behind his attacker, quite unharmed. 

The intruder jumped away, turning on their heel, the hem of their long coat spread out behind them like the torn, black sail of a mourning ship. The motion was adept, well-practiced. Probably a warrior of sort, though they were thin to the point of sickliness. It was difficult to gauge their features even in the harshness of the moonlight. Most of their face was obscured by cloth, and they sported a worn hat of an unfamiliar style as well as a short mantle, cinched with a chain. 

He saw their eyes, darting about through clouded spectacles, staring in unblinking incomprehension at the bleak surroundings. It was an expression the Outsider had often witnessed when he called people to this desolate place. The acute, hungry focus that came an instant later, after the stranger’s eyes snapped to where the Outsider was hovering, however… 

That was interesting. 

Before the Outsider could put words to these musings, the would-be assassin fired a wide volley of mercury pellets from their sidearm. Two bullets missed, sailing above the Outsider’s shoulder and embedding themselves into the crumbling stonework of the pillar behind him. The rest pierced his sternum, burning like molten iron, burrowing pits into his flesh and biting at his ribs. 

The intruder sprang forward, covering the distance in a fraction of a moment: a class of speed he’d only ever witnessed from his Marked. Their peculiar blade collapsed into a saw, aiming to sunder his head from his neck in one elegant swing. 

Again, the Outsider abandoned his body, the Void pulling greedily at the discarded matter before the remaining husk collapsed in on itself. The odd weapon sailed through the empty space unimpeded, trailing smoke and wisps of cloth. 

The stranger was quick, he’d give them that, but hardly a threat. 

When the Outsider manifested once more, it was not as a man, but as a swarm. A thousand black pinprick eyes trained on a single target, chittering snouts flashing needle teeth. As one, the rats leapt, flecking black foam from snapping jaws, ripping and gouging. The stranger swung out, frantic, their boots scrambling for purchase on wet stone. For every rat that ruptured against the stranger’s blade, a dozen more dug in—tearing at cloth and leather, skin, and then raw, exposed muscle. The warrior held their ground admirably, fighting through waves of foes and what was surely excruciating pain. 

Their loss was inevitable, however, and at last it ended. 

Whatever scraps the Outsider failed to devour crumbled away into ash and ember. The foreign moon, preternaturally luminous, remained. Its exposing light cut across the barren Void. The meat-bloated rats withered, twitching into nothing as the Outsider took up his preferred form. A great whale drifted through the open sky on an absent current, blood spurting eternal from frozen lesions. He was alone again. 

Regret lanced through him, ghosting through phantom wounds. It ached terribly. 

Perhaps he had been in error, escalating so quickly. It had been a brief encounter, but so curious. 

Worse still, there was no conceivable explanation of how that person had reached this place, or from where they had come. Nor, disturbingly, why their sudden appearance had circumvented what he had previously believed to be perfect omniscience. There was no principle in this world, no bit of natural philosophy or occultist knowledge, by which his clairvoyance might be occluded. It had always been so. 

Why, then… 

A faint gasp echoed through the Void. Where the interloper had fallen, a body began to coalesce. It was, he realized, not entirely unlike his own ability. 

Something like joy stirred in him to see those dark, swirling energies knit together into a shadowed lattice of muscle and bone. 

It was puzzling. 

He amended his previous thought: the power on display wasn’t merely similar—it was _identical_ to his ability, save for one aspect. Whatever source they drew upon was simply not the Void. 

It was with realization that he at last recognized what he was dealing with. 

They had come from outside the Void, the source of all things. Ostensibly impossible. 

There was only one conclusion: there was more to this world than even _he_ knew. Other worlds. Other planes. And here, another entity, the same as him. An uplifted human, just coming into their own power. Their materialization was sluggish. Sloppy. The unpracticed execution of a child learning a new trick. 

There were no other words for it. 

He had a sibling.


	4. Chapter 4

On clear days, when the wind was just right, the breeze coming up from the ocean swept through distant Yharnam and carried the scent of acrid incense and smoke down into the valley, before the westerlies snatched it away again in the morning. On days like those, people holed up indoors. No one wanted to be reminded of that awful place. As the windy season set in, and the days grew short and the cold sharp, spending lazy afternoons indoors became an increasingly common occurrence. 

Had this always been the practice of their valley town? It was difficult to say. Certainly, just one year before, there hadn’t been quite so many unlucky days. Quickly, though, and with the same single-minded determination it had taken to settle a small town in the remote wilderness, they had adapted to the inconvenience. Now, it was no more troublesome than a rainy day. 

So when mother closed the shutters and locked them tight, and father spread a few extra candles around, the Hunter didn’t remark upon it. It was agreeable enough spending a few hours cooped up with the family, practicing numbers in the hidebound notebook that had been a feast day gift, scratching doodles in the margins. 

Still, it was a challenge to ignore the temptation of that foreign wind, bearing the scent of secrets down into the valley. The Hunter once would have thrown the window open, insisting on a taste of that air—but they were a quick study. They had learned their lesson, blow by blow, on that night some months ago. 

Yharnam was for idle curiosity and dreams (if that even that), not investigation, or conversation. 

Perhaps that would’ve been the end of it, had the gate’s bell, staked at the end of the path to their small house, not tolled. Tolled, not just once, but three times, even though the people of the valley town knew better than to wander about on days like these. There was no mistaking it, though it was just a bit alarming. They had a visitor. 

And so mother went to retrieve the carving knife and the flintlock pistol that had been her wedding gift, while father opened the heavy wooden door, just enough to peer out. The chain stayed latched across the opening. 

~~insufficient to deter a beast, drawn by warm blood and the promise of an easy kill~~

“It’s only a man,” father said, sounding very much relieved. 

_“Only,”_ repeated mother, coming back into the room armed, because a man was more than enough. 

It really was just a man, in the end. He had come bearing a note from mother’s sister, who owned the Inn by the train station, which had filled up quite unexpectedly for this time of year and left the young traveler with nowhere to stay the night. The youth, perhaps seven or eight years the Hunter’s senior, was hoping that they might put him up for the night—and of course, he was more happy to pay the Inn’s standard rate. Such arrangements had been brokered between the Hunter’s mother and aunt before, though usually in person, and never on such an inauspicious day. 

The stranger apologized profusely for the inconvenience, and his manners won over father almost at once. A short, harsh discussion ensued between the Hunter’s parents, but finally, financial pragmatism won over vague suspicion. 

Thus, it was great uneasiness that the family sat down to eat that night, one more place set at the old oak dining table. 

Mother had gone as far to bring out the heirloom china. She may not have been happy about the proceedings, but she wasn’t in the practice of being rude to guests, especially not polite and unassuming guests. 

Such courtesy had been impressed upon the Hunter, too. They took it upon themselves to entertain the stranger for the duration of his stay. The pair made small talk throughout the meal, and then later into the evening, traded stories in front of the hearth. 

The stranger regaled the Hunter with tales of seafaring, strange lands, and the little adventures that came of trusting one’s fate to the road. This seemed like a marvelous enterprise to the young Hunter, but it finally came to the point where—having heard of yet another of the traveler’s many near-death experiences—they were at last forced, against propriety, to pry. The Hunter asked the man, in a reverent hush, what he had been seeking all this time, to risk his life so. 

The guest was not short on good humor, and quite tolerated the breach of etiquette in the name of satisfying well-earned curiosity. He told them, smiling broadly, that he didn’t journey for the sake of it. Long had he searched, through fen and forest, cities and seas, by direction of close-mouthed tribal wisemen and garrulous court nobles, for what he called the world’s greatest treasure. 

“No, not gold or jewels. You think too small, my friend,” the traveler said, eyes alight. 

“What else would be worth it?” the Hunter asked, thinking back to the erstwhile speculation that had been shared with them on the nature of distant Yharnam. 

At this, the stranger removed a silver frame from a shabby pocket, polished to a mirror sheen. He passed it over to the Hunter, who took it gently, cradling the keepsake in the palm of their hand. It was a tiny portrait. 

“My dear sister,” the guest said, nodding once. “She’s just turned twelve, at the end of last season. Almost a woman, now. I haven’t been back home to see her or my elder brother for many years, to my great shame.” 

“She’s lovely,” the Hunter remarked, for a lack of anything to say. It wasn’t quite true, though the girl had fetching eyes with long lashes, and rich brown skin. She simply appeared very frail. 

“Oh, yes. She takes after our departed mother, you see, not just in her looks, but also in constitution.” 

It took only a moment to make the mental leap. 

“Your sister is ill?” 

“I’m afraid so,” he said, falling silent. 

For a time, all that could be heard was the murmur of the fireplace, and the muffled turning of paper from mother’s book. 

“But the world is vast!” the stranger suddenly exclaimed, life coming back into his eyes. “And I’m certain that, at last, I’ve come upon something promising. Living here, you’ve surely heard of the panacea of Yharnam—” 

The room exploded into action. 

With a shout, father grabbed the Hunter under the arms and lifted them away from the stranger, who had risen, aghast, to his feet. Mother was shrieking, her book splayed open on the floor. Her hair had come loose from her careful braid as she advanced on the stranger, step by sure step, gun in hand. 

“How _dare_ you bring that name into my home?! Y-you—filling my child’s ears with such, such poisonous nonsense! Wretch!” 

She leveled the pistol, steadily, her teeth bared. 

“But, Madam, please—” 

“Panacea? What’s a panacea?” 

Father buried the Hunter’s head in his chest, but the damage was done. He clutched his child tighter, fearful. His arms were trembling, and the Hunter didn’t understand. 

“Get out of my house,” father said, quiet but resolute. _“Get out of my house, or I’ll kill you myself.”_

Mother, not content to wait for the young man to see himself out, grabbed a handful of the stranger’s collar, and was pulling him to the door, and then— 

Just for a moment, 

Something was 

~~mother, too tall, too thin, in a delicate shawl, a lace bonnet, her face cracking like old porcelain, face set in a passive rictus~~

~~articulated, segmented finger joints in well-oiled sockets, clenching tightly around a black jacket~~

~~and father, too, too old, too worn, his right leg missing from the knee down, hands twisted with unfamiliar callouses~~

~~smiling, but why?~~

~~and~~

~~the stranger, stranger yet, had black eyes~~

_~~knowing black eyes, and~~ _

_~~the smell of the ocean?~~_

Something was 

Something was very wrong. The Hunter wasn’t sure what, exactly, but something was terribly, terribly wrong. 

The door slammed shut, and the man, in search of Panacea, was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

“Come, now, haven’t you grown bored of this, yet?” the Outsider calmly intoned from his perch atop a granite pillar. 

His sibling, deaf to reason, hurled yet another molotov cocktail at him. The stoppered, blazing bottle traced a red path through the open air before shattering against the stonework, its oil splattering just a few feet shy of its mark. The fire bloomed, swelled, and eventually suffocated from lack of fuel. Already, his attacker was readying another bottle. This was rapidly becoming tiresome. 

“It’s pointless to carry on. Surely you’ve realized? I can’t be destroyed any more than you can.” 

It wasn’t quite the truth in either regard, but the last thing the Outsider wanted was to plant ideas in their head about his potential vulnerabilities. 

In any case, it would take more than a lucky throw with a bottle of oil to vanquish either of them. 

“Even if you succeeded, what then? You would knowingly consign yourself to a hollow existence in this emptiness? Trade away potential sodality for a brief, bloody triumph, and embrace a solitary eternity? Forever is a long, _long_ time. You wouldn’t find this place any more hospitable for my absence, believe you me.” 

Below him, his vexatious sibling lit the next bomb with a quick strike of flint. Their supply was, as far as he could tell, unlimited. It had been a fun surprise, discovering they were able to manifest matter at will in quite the same way the he was able to—though the exact mechanics of this ability continued to elude him, as did the indeterminate source of power they drew upon. 

The preternatural moon that still obstinately hung in his sky was perhaps the first such manifestation. It was no more under his power than the rancorous little godling lobbing another molotov at him. This time, the missile struck just the slightest bit closer to its target. Red oil splashed against the Outsiders boots, though he was quite out of reach of the flames. 

The Outsider cradled his chin in his palm, a portrait of aloof serenity. 

“You missed.” 

In response, the interloper twitched and fired their sidearm, an unwieldy blunderbuss. The spread went wide and stopped short, impacting the stone in some places, with most of the birdshot sailing harmlessly past the pillar. They then began to climb, closing the distance at a remarkable pace, considering both of their hands were occupied. 

They never stuck to the same tactic for too long, never seemed discouraged by their repeated failure to slay him, and in fact became a little more effective with each attempt. This behavior was the only evidence the Outsider had that there was a thinking mind underneath their animal aggression. 

Throughout the time they had spent testing their abilities against each other, his visitor had quickly developed counters to most of his baser forms of combat. His teleportation was met with a short-range equivalent that went a long way in evening the playing field. The second time he’d attacked in the guise of a rat swarm, the onslaught was cut short by his opponent suddenly bursting into a nest of coiled snakes—in short order, every rat was dispatched by crushing jaw and dripping venom. Wind blasts had kept his sibling off their feet for a time, granting a short reprieve in the scuffle and affording the Outsider more opportunities to attempt communication, but in response they’d summoned what could only be described as an _arcane meteor_ from the open air and the impact collapsed his ribs. The only reason he was being bombarded with bottles and bullets instead of conjured boulders was that the poor fool hadn’t yet figured out how to cast _up._

Perhaps it was wishful thinking, attributing his sibling’s burgeoning repertoire and adaptability to a buried, struggling consciousness. If upon their ascension to godhood they had _broken_ , and if the damage was unrepairable… the Outsider understood. A tragedy, to be sure, but he well understood. Such a traumatic ordeal might shatter anyone. 

After all, it had taken the Outsider whole ages to entirely come to terms with his new existence. Those thousands of years ago he had been utterly certain, right until the moment the knife fell, that he would find some way to break his bonds and escape… such was the folly of youth. He’d been convinced of his own immortality on some level, too clever by half. An idiot child… 

He would be patient with this newborn. There was time to wait for his sibling to resolve themselves. 

Then, he turned his head. A new development had coalesced out of the myriad possibilities in the physical realm. 

“Ah,” he said. 

Distinctly aware that someone had laid a hand on one of his worldly shrines, and of the opportunity that represented, he vanished from the pillar just as the climbing newborn brought their blade down where he had been sitting not a second before. The stone splintered, and the structure swayed. 

“I don’t suppose you’ll wait quietly while I go play host?” the Outsider said, now perching on a rising outcropping of rock. His ward slid down the pillar and sprinted towards him, becoming a fine, quick mist and swerving out of the way of the stone spike that burst up from below them at the last possible moment. They reformed and turned around to try for a different angle of approach, but found themselves cut off on every side by all manner of debris—the ancient, petrified prow of a thousand year old wooden schooner, the east wing of a crumbling manor, the bloated and bursting corpse of a festering whale, the barnacle-crusted wharf where the Outsider had once sat as a child and peered out over the grey ocean. Remnants of man and matter that the Void had collected. Now, these cast-offs formed a labyrinth. 

After a while, when the Outsider was satisfied that the maze was large enough to keep them occupied for a while, he went to meet his second visitor. He usually received so few guests, and now two at once? Fate was spoiling him. 

The Outsider appeared before his Marked, arms spread in welcome. 

“Corvo,” he said to the man, who was looking dour as ever. “It’s been quite some time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's everyone's best pal, corvo attano, come to say hello
> 
> (for the readers who haven't played Dishonored, he's the main protagonist of the first game and one of the selectable characters form the second. he was a guardian (and lover) of his country's empress, and the Outsider granted him supernatural powers after she was assassinated by ANOTHER person he'd given powers to. their relationship is complicated.)
> 
> updates will probably slow down until Life Stuff stops giving me problems. sorry, all


	6. Chapter 6

The unearthly vision that had greeted Corvo the moment he set a cautious hand on that cursed whalebone slab was at once familiar and disquieting. Not the least because one never quite became acclimated to an environment carved of gargantuan, gravity-defying stone slabs—and also glimpses of the future, and emptiness made manifest, and what could perhaps be described as the twisted unfurling of Corvo’s own aggrieved mind—but also because he’d half believed all this Void business was behind him. 

In the years that had elapsed since that terrible day his Empress had died in his arms, he had found some measure of peace, raising Emily to fill her mother’s throne. It was difficult work, and he sometimes struggled—for the right words to say, when all he could think of was how the Empress would know exactly how to dry Emily’s tears or quiet her rage. His girl, though no less kind and clever than the late Empress Jessamine, wasn’t made for the court games played by sycophantic nobles and dullard politicians. Nor did she have any measure of patience for long-winded reports of quarterly grain yield or lengthy discussions of military budgeting. Corvo often caught her half asleep during her lessons, her eyes listing towards the window and the view of the sun dappled sea—her head no doubt full of great sailing ships, bound for distant, wild lands. He reprimanded her as best he knew how, as gently as he was able, but in his heart he understood. Emily had so much of her mother in her that it was equal parts joy and agony to watch her grow, but they were kindred spirits, she and Corvo. 

A longing for adventure glinted in her eyes, her wily little smiles, her skinned knees and bruised knuckles. The same spark, no doubt, that had him leave his homeland for Dunwall with nothing but the clothes on his back, his sword, a handful of coins, and the trophy he’d claimed from the swordsman championship when he had just barely left boyhood. He looked back on the headstrong Serkonian lad he had been with a distant fondness and more than a little ire. 

Corvo knew he must have given his poor mother such grief. He contemplated with a singular dread Emily’s rapid emergence into adolescence. 

The day was fast approaching that Emily would be expected to govern in full. To indulge Emily her daydreams and poor attentiveness would only do her harm, no matter how he wished for her to remain a child for just a little longer. He understood well how responsibility settled like a leaden weight, constraining, suffocating. This was simply another price one paid for peace. Corvo knew Emily would come to understand this in time. 

For peace, or even just the _hope_ of peace, there was very little he wouldn’t trade. 

The Mark on his hand, alight with eldritch energies, was surely proof of that. 

Right on cue, the feeling he had—like a thousand unblinking eyes upon him—intensified. 

“Corvo,” said the Outsider, appearing from thin air with arms spread in a mockery of greeting. “It’s been quite some time.” 

It had, at that. He’d gotten complacent, quietly assuming this stage of his life was over. It was jarring, being back in this place he so closely associated with those awful days. At the same time, ever since he had accepted the Outsider’s “gift,” he’d always felt the Void within him, sleeping underneath his skin. 

The Outsider was as he remembered, and yet not. It was as though those cold features had shifted nearly imperceptibly—angle, depth, slant, and shape, all a touch out of place. Like returning to an area he’d been deeply familiar with in childhood to find it small and worn, all the more alien for its sameness. 

For a moment, looking up at the Void given human form, he doubted his memory. 

But when the Outsider spoke again, and the tone and timbre was minutely different, he knew his impression had been correct. The Outsider had changed, just a little, in the years since they had spoken last. 

Corvo wondered if the Outsider was even aware of it. 

“You’ve cost a poor scullery maid her favorite luck charm today.” 

Corvo’s grip on the rune tightened. The wedge of whale bone dug deeper into his palm. He wasn’t in the mood to play the Outsider’s game. That much hadn’t changed with time. 

“It wouldn’t have brought her any good fortune,” he said with a quiet certainty. 

“On the cold morning she found it, she might have very well agreed with you. She was just a girl, then. Much to her consternation, her father had sent her down to the waterfront. You see, of all her chores, she most despised gathering driftwood for their little brick hearth. The sailors she passed on the way would jeer and spit, and if she tripped and fell on the beach, the rocks would slice her dress to ribbons.” 

Corvo, well acquainted with the Outsiders drawn-out morality soliloquies, was silent. Undeterred by his lack of reaction, the Outsider vanished in a swirl of tiny stones (which darted about like a school of panicked fish before crumbling to dust), and reappeared to Corvo’s left, gesturing emphatically. 

“She didn’t know what to make of the rune at first, when she dug it out of the sand and surf, buried among the splintered remains of a fishing vessel. Certainly it was the most interesting trinket she’d picked up from among the flotsam—even better than the silver coin or the green glass eye. By the time she returned home, having forgotten the aim of her errand, she had convinced herself she’d discovered quite a treasure. Her father, as you might imagine, didn’t feel the same. Nor would the Abby, who the man at once threatened to bring down on his daughter’s poor young head. It was by the grace of luck alone, then, that her hand found the axe mounted to the wall as she stepped blindly back, and luck that her father was too blearily intoxicated to notice. Luck, that he didn’t cry out at the first blow, or the second, or third, and luck again that the murder that morning was never connected to her.” 

It was strange, Corvo thought, his blood running just a little colder, that how no matter what depravities he witnessed, there was always some new depth to sink. 

“There would be no more walks through the freezing morning, spent with chapped hands clasped around a bounty of damp firewood. To the girl, this was proof enough of the rune’s power. Why, she even had it bundled under her clothes when she applied for work at Dunwall Castle. You may not believe my rune brought her any good fortune, but it’s difficult to deny that her luck ran out the moment it left her possession. What will it be, Corvo? The streets? The dungeons, and a swift execution? Or will you hand her over to the tender mercies of the Overseers?” 

Corvo hadn’t missed this. Not the impossible decisions, or the Outsider’s detached voyeuristic pleasure at human suffering. 

It wasn’t as though he could just let it lie. The Outsider’s runes attracted pestilence in the way a rotting corpse did—rats and flies, yes, and disease too, but of the _mind_ rather than the body. If what the Outsider said was true, the maid he currently had consigned to the servant’s quarters for bringing in “contraband” was also a murderer, albeit one in ostensible self-defense. It was unfortunate, but— 

A sound like metal rending stone screeched out over the typical eerie silence of the Void, and Corvo jolted out of his thoughts and assumed a defensive stance, angling his body toward the direction of the noise. There, from underneath a rocky precipice bathed white by a bizarre and luminous moon he hadn’t until this moment noticed, the noise came again. An unspeakable sense of threat overtook him, sticking like a needle in the soft flesh where his skull met his spine, and twisted, _twisted,_ with each new horrible sound. 

It was getting louder, closer. 

A profound terror took him, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since Daud’s assassins had snatched Emily away—since he had cradled Jessamine’s cooling, bloodied body, and looked into her vacant, glassy eyes. 

“Of course,” the Outsider said, with a fond little smiled that was terribly out of place on his cold features, “They just went _over._ ” 

_They?_

Corvo looked to the Outsider for explanation, or maybe guidance, for what would be the first and last time. Rather than answer the unspoken question, the Outsider just smiled, his black eyes dark with the joy of some new game. 

“Run,” the Outsider said, “Or die.” 

The brevity of the statement was as chilling as the words themselves. 

Then, as the unknown entity’s gloved hand reached up over the distant stone, and their long, skeletal fingers curled hungrily at the open air, the Outsider disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Chapter 6: The Tale of the Poor Scullery Maid
> 
> or maybe
> 
> Chapter 6: in which the Hunter RENEGADE INTERRUPTS what was otherwise a very standard Dishonored-style interaction
> 
> I’m pretty pleased with this chapter even though it’s mostly just the Outsider talking for a million years because it feels pretty true to the spirit of the game, and also for some reason I tried to make a canon-compliant reason why the Outsider looks and sounds different between Dishonored 1 and 2??? No one asked for this but by god I Did It Anyway
> 
> also this was my chapter outline:
> 
> Hunter: **kill**  
>  Corvo: oh shit  
> Outsider: I have arranged a playdate, you two have fun now
> 
>  
> 
> _behold My Process_
> 
>  
> 
> New chapters will still be slow in coming as I try to find a job and also a new place to live, so hang in there


	7. Chapter 7

There were a great many things amiss in the Hunter’s household. It was as if the foundation of their home had somehow shifted that rainy night, when the visitor came and spoke the word _panacea_ —shifted to some new, malignant geometry, such that a formless evil was invited inside. Had it billowed up from beneath the bedrock foundation of their village, where caverns were said to wind, like the twisted viscera of the earth? Or drifted down the mountain, buoyed by the acrid Yharnam smoke? No matter where the evil had come, the Hunter’s family had no defense against it. 

~~maybe it had always been there, just underneath the surface, where the mounting secrets coiled tightly against the underside of mother and father’s skin, pressing down on swelling tongues. Behind closed teeth and grim frowns, stopping up the gullet with lies. A slow self-poisoning.~~

The corruption had settled in, soaking indiscriminately into wood and linen, heart and bone. Everything under their roof had been imperceptibly tainted. Now, there wasn’t a meal shared in this house that didn’t taste like ash, nor a word exchanged that wasn’t barbed and venomous.

The Hunter awoke that morning to a shouting match in the rooms below, an argument continued from the previous day. Another of mother’s hens had been taken in the night, and the perpetrator—a fox, she suspected—had left a merry red trail that stretched from the hutch to the edge of the woods. Mother was of the opinion that the hutch needed to be watched through the night. Father, that guarding some chickens wasn’t worth the risk ( _risk of what, exactly?_ ), musket or no. Not so long ago, a fight between mother and father was a rare and inconsequential event—almost playful, like sun showers, and just as fleeting. Now these quarrels, like the long spells of troubling silence and tense glances, were a common occurrence. 

Suddenly, their voices went from fevered screaming to an abrupt hush. Too quiet to overhear, over the incessant cry of the big black raven that had taken up perch on the windowsill. The bird had become something of a nuisance, lately—or at least, the Hunter thought it was recent. Everything was so muddled up these days. Relatively recently, it must’ve been, but it was… difficult, somehow, to recall exactly when the black-eyed nuisance had started its mad crusade to annoy the Hunter out of their mind. In a way, it felt as though the thing had _always_ been there, keeping contemptuous vigil with glossy black eyes.

There was no point in shooing it away, the Hunter knew. It always flew back before long.

No matter. 

Electing to ignore the raven, the Hunter creeped along the pine flooring, careful to step near the furniture where the wood was settled and quiet. In a well-practiced crouch, the Hunter pressed an ear to the door of their attic bedroom.

“—does it matter, if you lose a few … safe …”

“Are you a man or _aren’t_ you? … being what it is, we can’t afford—”

“—please … scarcity, only get worse … spread all the way to Halitmouth …”

The Hunter only caught every few words, and the guttural croak of the raven was only making eavesdropping more difficult.

“ _Contain yourself_ , why don’t you?” muttered the Hunter. If anything, the daft bird seemed to delight in its acknowledgement, puffing up like a chimney sweep’s brush. _Vexatious pest._  


“—stay with your sister, just for a … given this some thought, and I don’t believe …”

The Hunter opened their door a sliver, risking the creak of rusted metal.

“… _abandoning_ this house, or the practice! … some blasted rumors. Catch that _damned_ fox and be done with it. …speak anymore of this.” The Hunters parents moved away from one another into separate rooms. A door slammed. Elsewhere, the creak of a chair.

It appeared the opportunity to spy had already passed. As shameful as it was to listen in on their private conversations, the Hunter’s parents never spoke of their worries openly anymore. It was quite obvious that something more alarming than the death of a few chickens was upon them.

Contemplating foxes and rumors, the Hunter had a childish thought: that perhaps if the animal that was taking hens was caught, mother would be happy, and things would finally go back to the way they had always been. The notion was coached in naiveté, and some strange and cynical part of them knew with utter certainty that this venture could only end in failure. _Knew_ that, because, because,  


~~because it had already happened, hadn’t it?~~

The Hunter imagined the proud smile Mother might make if the fox was gone and the threat was gone, and held to the thought like the line of a kite. 

Shuffling quietly back to their bed, they retrieved a pair of boots from a wooden trunk. Laced up and ready, they paused. On a whim, the Hunter pocketed the leather-bound journal they’d hidden inside one of father’s old cigar cases. The possession of this book was one secret the Hunter felt quite justified in keeping. It didn’t feel safe to leave it unattended for long. Besides, they was likely a lot of waiting to be done on this hunt. Bringing something to read along was a fine idea. 

It was a difficult book, written both in lofty language and with poor penmanship. The Hunter hadn’t had much luck with it, yet. But if there were secrets of Yharnam to be found in this dismal town, there was no better place to look that the personal diary of a wandering scholar. It was a shame he’d had to leave it behind, but it was like Father sometimes said… one man’s loss was another’s boon. It was simply luck that both parents had overlooked the thing, otherwise it surely would’ve been tossed out into the rain that night, the same as its owner. 

_Property of A. Kinsley_ was written inside the front cover. Hopefully the Hunter would be able to return it to him, one day. 

With the book tucked into the waistband of their breeches, the Hunter slid their window open (much to the raven’s raucous excitement) and slipped down the thatched roof, then clambered down the small shed where firewood was stowed. From there, it was just a man’s height to the ground. The Hunter jumped down, their boots ~~slipping on damp stone~~ squelching in the mud.

It had been a long while since the Hunter was allowed out of the house alone. It was a sorry sight. The house, which had been in their family’s possession for three generations, seemed a shadow of its former self. It wasn’t any one thing, though the walls could use repainting, and many of the window shutters were crooked, or any number of small issues. That was all true of the house even before the Hunter’s family had begun to fall apart. Such flaws, once easily overlooked, now seemed to be indications of the troubled nature of the house’s residents. Was it an irrational notion, that the unhappiness within the walls of that house could alter the context of its façade? Like a snail that had curled in on itself and died, leaving nothing behind but a tiny desiccated body and pervading emptiness. It was still the same shell it had always been, but…

The Hunter moved away from the house toward the tree line. It wouldn’t do to be spotted now.

There wasn’t much of a trail by the time the Hunter approached the hutch. There were still spots of blood on the dirt floor of the pen, drying now but still slightly tacky. The chickens were somewhat nervous, crowding for shelter in their coop and only rarely venturing outside to peck at bits of gravel. Did they know they were in danger? Or was it just the raven, turning lazy circles in the air overhead, that they were wary of? Regardless, there was no sign of any fox.

The first step would be to arm themselves. This was accomplished in short order, when the Hunter spotted a particularly hefty stick. It would do as a makeshift club. They tested their weapon, making a powerful swing. The chickens, who had begun to calm down in the Hunter’s presence, scattered in a burst of startled clucking and shed feathers. The raven, having landed on the coop’s roof like a particularly dour-looking weathervane, seemed to find it all very amusing.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait.

Deciding to scale a nearby tree, the Hunter found themselves a stable perch and set about their foxhunt. To stave off boredom, they idly glanced through the notebook they’d brought along, scanning only for information pertinent to their little fascination with the mountain settlement of Yharnam.

Just as they had found before, the only relevant information was at the very end, in one of the last entries the scholar had made.

_…what little the man divulged to me, if indeed a man it was, given their bunched robes and oddly lifting, adrogyne voice, seemed to indicate a vast pantheon and extensive clergy that only superficially resembles the more conventional religious institutions of my own homeland. This was at least more than was divulged by the errant Yharnamite maiden I came across on the cyclopean rise of the Ferrumveld steppe, whose fearful mutterings to a Yharnam God called “Kos” (or perhaps “Kosm”?) I only half understood and of which she refused to repeat, no matter what I offered her in exchange for her well-guarded lore. This strange, protective attitude seems prevalent among their kind, though I know not why. If one were to ask most any worshipper of any faith under the sun for details of their scripture or laws, one would find themselves up to their chin in mythos at once. The religious love a chance for an easy convert and respond well to honest and enthusiastic inquiries, or such has been my experience, and I am nothing if not well-traveled. How curious, then, that the residents of Yharnam are so eager to keep their Gods close to their chests. Though if the panacea they hoard is distributed by their ecclesiastic order, as the hooded figure implied, perhaps they have ample cause to keep such insight to themselves. Though I learned little, my confidence in the panacea’s existence is bolstered. After the encounter, I set off at once—_

A twig snaps, and for one horrible moment, the Hunter is sure one of their parents has caught them. Fearful, they snap the book shut. How can they possibly explain the diary?

But the expected shout never comes. 

The Hunter looked about, taking their improvised club and pointing it towards the source of the noise. 

A small black bird. Well, only “small” relative to the raven. It was an average-sized bird.

And yet the trepidation the Hunter felt, instead of fading at the sight of the bird, only grew. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with that crow.

~~no, no, it hadn’t happened like this at all~~

What if Mother was wrong? What if there was no fox?

~~supposed to have fallen asleep in the tree, and hours later, Father discovers the open window~~

Never mind that a crow could hardly hope to kill a chicken, let alone drag its carcass dozens of feet.

~~Mother throws the book into the fire, and after...~~

It should’ve been laughable. It should’ve given them pause. But the Hunter had a surety beyond rational explanation. An unshakable conviction that the crow was not only the culprit, but also frighteningly capable, no matter its apparent size. This was a dangerous beast.

 ~~I still have the scars~~

Still, it should be easier to kill a crow than a fox. The Hunter brandished their stick, which had at some point become a knife. All the better.

~~This isn’t how it happened. This isn’t real. _This isn’t real._~~

The crow tilted its head, taunting, _mocking_. The raven laughed, endlessly entertained.

~~Something was wrong.~~

The Hunter charged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the illusion begins to well and truly collapse, and even through their warped perspective, the hunter can recognize a dangerous foe when they see one
> 
> sorry this chapter sucks?????????? this one fought me, i'll admit


	8. Chapter 8

Corvo _moved_. 

He moved in a way he hadn’t had cause to since he had rescued Emily from his fair-weather friends, and put an end to their little coup. He moved like he was a young hellion again, running rampant in the port city of Karnaca—when he would come home with a bloodied lip or a broken bone, and the grey at his mother’s temples would claim more of her head. Or perhaps, in truth, for all of the running Corvo had done in his life (through jails, sewers, the dens of witches, alleyways, palace corridors, and the architecture of the Void itself), he had never run _quite like this_. 

The thing chasing him was a greater terror than anything he had ever run from. Corvo could feel it in his bones. A nameless fear, curdling the blood in his veins even as adrenaline surged through his system. He ran like a rabbit with a beast at its back, slavering jaws snapping in his ears, but with even greater urgency. 

The natural philosophers said that mankind was a fragile thing. 

That man had only just recently crawled out of the mud, on the cosmological scale. That he was a creature not so far removed from a primitive lifeform who stared out into the great darkness, yet unlit by the tireless march of science and culture—and, uncomprehending, knew a fear of such profound depth, that it had inspired all the progress to come after. 

Corvo knew that same fear, now. It was _here_ , garbed in man’s form, but twisted, distorted. Right behind him, on his heels. With every passing second, it closed the gap between the present and antiquity, as if furious that small-minded mankind had pretended themselves above it. 

The thing hunting him—gender indeterminate, too tall and too thin, behatted and bespectacled. A weapon in each emaciated hand, the first a savage mockery of a saw, the second an unwieldy and out-of-fashion blunderbuss. Both used with impossible, tireless efficiency. And then there were the _surprises_. 

A burst of coiled tentacles snapping around his leg, burning through the cotton of his trousers and into his flesh. The massive saw-sword coming alight with crackling flame or electricity, to deliver strikes with even greater brutality. Swarms of what could only be described as _wraiths_ , formed of blood and malice, in the shape of flayed human skulls. 

Corvo had seen strange sights in his time, visions that had made him question his grip on sanity—many of them in this very place. None of that, however, prepared him for _this_. 

He _blinked_ up an outcropping of stone, a familiar sensation of being yanked though space that usually meant he was on his way to safety. It wasn’t enough distance. The Hunter—and here the name just _came_ to him, like a white-hot brand pressed against the inside of his skull—had a blink-like power of their own, and just chained a few shorter teleportations together to match what ground he had managed to gain. His _timestop_ proved marginally more effective, but it was taxing, and pressingly, it didn’t last long. 

Corvo couldn’t do this forever. He couldn’t even do this for another minute. He needed to find the exit, now. There was always an exit to this place, after the Outsider had finished leading him around by the nose, made whatever point he had to make about human morality. 

Then again— 

_“Of course,” the Outsider said, with a fond little smiled that was terribly out of place on his cold features..._

—he couldn’t very well trust the being who the Overseers called a capricious trickster god, even if the Void-bound soul had granted Corvo his favor in the past. The man seemed to have some amount of affection for the abomination trying to cut out his heart. 

Damn them both for this. 

He would make it back to Emily. 

The rocks beneath Corvo’s feet became clay roof tiles, became fine black sand, became the rusting bulk of a whaling ship. He dashed into a gap in the hull as the gravity of the Void shifted from horizontal to vertical, and found himself in the ruin of a crumbling limestone temple whose style of architecture was both too ancient and too damaged to place. The Hunter was almost upon him, scoring a deep gash in the well-treaded stonework while he _blinked_ away. Sparks flew where the cleaver as it tore at the ground, and in the brief illumination, the creature’s vacant, hungry stare was highlighted against the darkness before vanishing. 

Corvo groped along the worn wall, covered from floor to ceiling in pictograms too faded to be read, that could only be felt. He gritted his teeth at the shape of them. _Profane._ They were in some way profane. In the distance, a stone skittered across the ground. Corvo lurched backwards at the sudden sound of boots on rock. It was only by tripping on a gnarled tree root that had burst up through the floor that he avoided being splattered across the carvings. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, the idea of soaking those pictograms in his blood was almost as nauseating as his near-certain death at this thing’s hands. 

The cleaver came down, parting the air in a rush of kinetic force that sent dust flying into the air. 

Corvo coughed and rolled out of the way. 

A quick _timestop_ to get his bearings. Slowly, painfully slowly, he continued down the hall. 

An exit. 

There had to be an exit. 

He knew the Outsider was watching—no doubt with the same detached, conceited curiosity that he watched all of humanity’s triumphs and treachery with. The smug quirk of thin lips, black eyes glinting. The very same expression the Outsider had no doubt worn when Jessamine was killed. That black-eyed monster had granted her assassin power, and then, in the wake of that crime against the empire, saw fit to raise up Corvo in the same manner. Why? Why all of that, only to have him die here at the hands of some mad Void spirit? 

“You bastard,” he gasped, desperately trying to gather his breath while pushing through a thicket of roots that cut into the skin of his hands. “Where did you put the _exit?_ ” 

As if taking pity on him, the floor of the temple suddenly crumbled inward, dropping out from under him like a trap door. 

Corvo fell. 

Ten feet, then twenty. In his peripheral vision, he saw the Hunter, tumbling head over heels, skeletal limbs flailing, trying without success to right themselves in the open air. 

Hysterical, uncharacteristic laughter bubbled up in Corvo at the sight. 

He was going to die here, for a moment of the Outsider’s entertainment. 

They hit the ground at roughly the same time. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs. Still, there was no time to get his breath back. With a start, Corvo realized the Hunter was already back on their feet, looming over him, silhouetted against the tremendous moon like death against a sickroom window. They raised their weapon, intending to bring it down into his stomach. A messy way to die. Corvo reached for a _blink_ , a _timestop_ , _windblast_ , **anything**. 

He was all tapped out. 

Knowing full well the futility of the action, Corvo raised his arms defensively in front of his body. He wished he had the sword Pierro had given him. Then, at least, he could go down fighting. 

Distantly, he realized he was still clutching the whalebone Rune in his hand—the thing that had summoned him into the Void in the first place. 

Corvo waited to die, making his peace with that as best he knew. 

He thought of Jessamine. Of Emily. 

Corvo waited. 

He thought of his poor mother, dying alone in their ancestral home, and continued to wait. 

The Hunter, still in position to deliver the finishing blow, stared at the Outsider’s Rune. 

And continued to stare. 

Corvo blinked up that the dark figure, confused and tentatively hopeful. 

He didn’t dare believe this reprieve would last, but with as much care as he could muster, Corvo slowly uncurled on the ground and slid the Rune away from him, the carved face up. It shone almost painfully, a white beacon against black stone in the moon's light. His pursuer followed the Rune with their eyes, enraptured. This may well be his last chance. 

Corvo stood slowly and shifted backwards, one step at a time, so as not to draw the Hunter’s attention. 

It hardly mattered. The Hunter still stood transfixed by the Rune, even as Corvo's measured retreat became a sprint. 

The Outsider appeared, standing in the empty frame of a window, looking down at the scene with palpable _intent_ , no trace of his previous smug amusement left on his gaunt face. 

Corvo didn’t care. He could see the familiar distortion in the air ahead that indicated a door back to the material realm. The Outsider was finished with him, now. So taken was he with this new development that Corvo wasn’t worth the usual parting sermon, it seemed. 

Fine by him. 

As he stepped into the exit, Corvo looked back at the odd pair, trying to make sense of what had just occurred. The Hunter was hunched over the Rune he’d placed down, their hand hovering close to its shinning surface. The Outsider had stepped down from his perch, and was speaking softly to his companion, a plaintive hush in his voice that Corvo had never heard him use before. 

Having so witnessed, Corvo was gone from the Void.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Bloodborne terms, Corvo just _gained a bunch of Insight_. Terrifying, right? 
> 
> Hey, friendos. If you like weird, experimental horror stories, you should check out the Prototype thing I’m writing:  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/12521200/chapters/28510852  
> The tone’s different from this, but if you like the idea of being a weird virus monster, eating people, and stealing their looks and memories, give it a look. (it’s not getting any attention so I’m pouting about it)
> 
> I figure if you’re a fan of Bloodborne and Dishonored, you probably have the stomach for it, hahaha xD


End file.
